how i create volumetric fog – after effects fog tutorial

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Volumetric fog is one of those things that can really take the vibe of your shot to the next level but its not exactly easy to pull off. So hopefully me going over my process helps you out if you ever want to get a similar look for your footage! Now personally I don't really like stock footage of fog all too much, it usually seems a little too obvious for my taste, so instead I opt to use the Turbulent Noise Effect.

By animating the transform settings and evolution options of the Turbulent Noise we can get it to slowly drift in any direction while the evolution gives it some fog like movement. (The expression I usually toss on the transform is [value[0] + time*25, value[1]] which basically just means change the X value by the composition time times 25, and the evolution expression I use is time*60

After that I just set the fog layer's blending mode to Screen. But that alone isn't enough to give off a realistic effect at all, the real power of the process comes from stacking multiple fog layers on top of each other, while making the fog heavier and heavier as it gets further away from the camera.

There's more than a few ways to go about doing that but what I think is a good solution is to decide on what in your scene can be split into different depth sections. For my example it's pretty straight forward because buildings are a great way to easily identify depth changes in your footage. After you've identified what you think would be some good depth layers, create a black solid and mask out whatever you'd consider to be part of your first Depth layer. After that, precompose the layer because we'll be using it as a Luma Matte for one of our fog layers!

That's the general process right there — to simplify even further, say we have fog layers 1, 2 and 3 as well as Depth/Matte layers A B and C. We're essentially saying we want Fog 1 to put fog everywhere except A, Fog 2 to put fog everywhere except A&B, and Fog 3 to put fog everywhere except A,B&C. That way A will have the least amount of fog on it, B will have twice as much as A and C will have the most fog over top of it.

After adding the fog and optionally color correcting your footage to look a bit darker, what really ties the whole thing together is stacking Adjustment layers with Glows on them.

By having glows that are the same color as the sky, it makes it look like the fog is softly wrapping around whatever we choose to apply it to! I usually operate on 3 Glow layers. The first I usually let apply to everything, this one is a very soft and subtle glow with a small radius just to soften edges. The 2nd and 3rd Glow are more targeted ones that I usually apply to object that are particularly far away or high up using a mask on the layer. The second glow is meant to be fairly strong and the 3rd is usually my glow with an intensity set to 1 — meaning almost completely wash out whatever it's applied to.

And that's it! The main takeaway I think would be to layer your effects for a more nuanced and realistic look. Fog aside, even layers drop shadows creates a more realistic shadow for your projects so give it a try!
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timestamps
0:00 - intro

1:55 - making our first fog layer
2:14 - creating our first depth matte
4:02 - more fog more mattes more fun
6:04 - time to colour grade
8:23 - take it up a notch with glows
10:17 - applying it to a video
12:18 - final advice nuggets
tags
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Видео how i create volumetric fog – after effects fog tutorial канала Academy Of Edits